Publication Details

Abstract

Hegel’s contribution in the history of ethical doctrines as well as his significance for Marxist ethics is that he effectuated destruction of sheer normative, deductive ethics („ethics of Sollen). The latter approach dominated especially in the moral philosophy of Kant and Fichte. Though Hegel effectuated this destruction from the standpoint of objective idealism, his endeavour aimed at bringing the concrete morality into the subject of ethics.

Contrary to Kant, for whom morale is a concept given by the self-legislation of Reason, morality with Hegel is dependent on certain social relationships. Hegel as the first philosopher in the history saw a concrete historical, social determination of morality, though in idealistic form. Methodologically the most relevant was the idea that social law cannot be reduced to a moral form or legal norm. Marx and Engels set Hegel „from head on feet” when they formulated correctly the relation of being and consciousness (social being and social consciousness) which made it possible for them to understand the real motive forces of development of moral phenomena and unveil the complexity and mediation of the relation between the social law and moral norm.